Down jackets frequently used as heavy winter clothes are light, have heat retaining performance, and have been common, particularly, in recent years. In a method for producing a down jacket, woven fabrics relatively high in density, which are called down shell fabrics, are produced; the shell fabrics are made into a bag form; downs, a typical example of which is downs on waterfowl's chest, or on some other, are put into the shell fabrics; and then the shell fabrics are sewed. However, down jackets using conventional shell-fabric have problems of having a hard texture, and being thick to be bulky although the jackets have windbreak performance to some extent. Moreover, the down jackets are merely capable of being plainly dyed, or dyed by printing to have a simple color. Thus, the down jackets are poor in design property about color. Furthermore, for outdoors or playing sports, such as skiing or snowboarding, outdoors, there is a problem in that the down jackets are poor in sunlight-absorbance so that a person who wears the jacket does not necessarily feel sufficiently warm.
Against the problems, a conventional technique that is a method most relevant to the present invention, in which a pigmented yarn is used, suggests the following countermeasures:
(1) Production of a Polyamide Pigmented Fiber
Polyamide fibers are lower in Young's modulus, and smaller in crystallinity than polyester fibers, so that the polyamide fibers have a soft texture to be frequently used for woven fabrics for downs. A method using a pigmented yarn of a polyamide fiber is suggested (Patent Document 1).
(2) Usage of a Polyamide Pigmented Fiber
As a usage of a polyamide pigmented fiber, a carpet excellent in stain resistance is suggested (Patent Document 2). However, the fineness of the fiber for the carpet is from 130 to 2000 dtex, so that when this fiber is used, as it is, in a woven fabric for downs, the yarn of the fiber is too thick, so that the woven fabric has a hard texture and further the yarn cannot be woven into a high density. Thus, the resultant woven fabric cannot gain an excellent windbreak performance. Furthermore, a yarn having a fineness of 350 dtex to give a high strength is also suggested for airbags (Patent Document 3). However, the yarn has a large fineness so that in the same manner, the yarn cannot be adapted to woven fabrics for downs.
(3) Design Property of a Cloth Made of a Polyamide Pigmented Fiber
Suggested is a product obtained by subjecting a pigmented yarn and an undyed yarn to intermingling weaving in a process for producing stockings to give an external appearance having different colors (Patent Document 4). Although the strands for the stockings each have a total fineness of 20 to 30 dtex to be fine, filaments thereof have a filament fineness of 10 dtex or more to be thick so that the resultant cloth has a hard texture. Moreover, the cloth does not gain a windbreak performance not to be usable for downs. Additionally, suggested is a cloth in which fiber filaments each having a flat cross section are laminated onto each other to give an optical interference (Patent Document 5). However, the cloth is merely a cloth for which an optically interfering performance is required.